


Steal the Soil of Her Life

by ghostwriterofthemachine



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Badass Women, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Feminist Themes, Force-Sensitive Shmi Skywalker, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mother-Son Relationship, Shmi Skywalker Deserved Better, Shmi understands the Metanarrative, Slave Culture, Slavery, The Force, all the grossness that comes from a story about slavery, names and naming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26604442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwriterofthemachine/pseuds/ghostwriterofthemachine
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a little girl, and a greedy man sold her. This event has long-lasting, cosmic implications. This is an event that sets up three generations of war.But we don’t need to know that, for it to be sad. We don’t need to know that for it to matter. Once upon a time, there was a little girl, and someone looked at her and turned her into an object and sold her far away from her home. There are no cosmic implications needed for all of us to cry at that.The nameSkywalkeris Shmi's legacy. She never let anyone take it away from her.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker
Comments: 18
Kudos: 104





	Steal the Soil of Her Life

**Author's Note:**

> I apparently have a lot of feelings about Shmi and also I am contrary enough that, every time I see something that is very popular widespread fanon, I feel the need to offer a different reading. So enjoy; Skywalker isn't a slave name, Skywalker is _Shmi's_ name
> 
> Title from The Good Life's "The Modern Mary," which is a very Shmi song.

Sometimes, in old fairytales, we chop off the parts we don’t like, and keep the parts that we do. For instance, on the planet of Earth, there is a story called 'Rapunzel.' In some very old versions of this story, the princess escaping the tower is the beginning of another story, where she must defeat the Prince’s evil mother. But this is not as nice of an ending as the other one, so people stopped telling it. 

Let’s do that, but in reverse. The parts that happen before the story.

Once upon a time, there was a princess. Well, she was a priestess, but where she came from, the titles were one and the same. Her people had a strong connection to the Force-Which-Binds, and she had a stronger connection than most. It did not sing to her the way it sang to people who were strong enough to leave to the Temple when they were infants, but it told her things. It let her know things. And one day, she would lead her people in knowledge and kindness and Light. 

Her name was Shmi and she carried the name Skywalker. That name was sacred. She had it because she was the princess, but also because it was who she was. 

And so for the first 8 years of her life, Shmi grew and learned and was loved. Her teachers instructed her to listen to the Force-Which-Binds, and her friends taught her kindness, and her people taught her joy. 

And then, one day, the King of the next country over decided he disliked her people enough to attack them. His forces were larger, and they were unprepared. 

He won. 

Shmi’s memories of that night were of fire and chaos and blood. The feeling of her caretaker’s hands on her shoulders as they huddled with the other prisoners. The feeling of being ripped from his arms, because the King knew who she was.

_ (‘Will I ever see you again?’ _ she remembered screeching, hands wrenched out as if that could bring them back together. 

Tears running down his cheeks and his voice, choked,  _ ‘What does your heart tell you?’ _

And Shmi could only wail because her heart was telling her  _ No, it’s telling her No _ and for the first time she wanted the Force-Which Binds to be  _ wrong— _ )

Here is another way we could have started this story; once upon a time, there was a little girl, and a greedy man sold her. This event has long-lasting, cosmic implications. This is an event that sets up three generations of war. 

But we don’t need to know that, for it to be sad. We don’t need to know that for it to  _ matter. _ Once upon a time, there was a little girl, and someone looked at her and turned her into an object and sold her far away from her home. There are no cosmic implications needed for all of us to cry at that. 

Shmi didn’t know any of this. She only knew she was never going home. 

The King sold her to some slavers, and the slavers set to making her something worth selling. She was a princess. She was prideful, and mouthy, and balked against every order they gave her and every injustice she saw done. 

They beat that out of her fairly quickly.

They beat everything out of her, really, except for the Force and her name. She kept those wrapped up so tightly inside of her that they couldn’t take her away. 

And then she was truly sold, to one master and then another and then another. She passed hands freely, those first few years. It wascvery hard to keep a slave who was also a petulant child, with no one to take care of her. 

Then, one day, she ends up on a dry planet called Tatooine, far away from anywhere she's ever known. It was her job to fix things that were broken, and it was her job to clean things when they got dirty. She was shoved from task to task and she performed each one as best as she could. She got very good at the ‘fixing things’ part, and that made her valuable. Though she kept her head ducked, she kept her back straight, the way she was taught when she was very young and the world still held kindness. 

“My name is Shmi Skywalker,” she introduced herself to people. 

“Skywalker is not a slave’s name,” said the people, wherever she went. Masters and freemen and other slaves, too. “Slaves do not have names such as Skywalker.”

On Tatooine, slaves either had no last names at all, or they had the names of objects or physical features. “Malak Radiator,” or “Brenna Dimples,” or “Illie Crankshaft” or “Shmi Darkhair,” which was what they wanted to call her.

And Shmi would raise her chin and say, when it was safe to say it, “Well, it is my name.”

A perfect, subtle trap— for you either needed to agree it was a slave’s name, or admit that she was not a slave.

This usually got her a cuff around the head, if she was bold enough to say it to a freeman. It got her a strange, puzzled stare from other slaves— this strange young woman, this Skywalker, so kind and cowed and bold all the same. 

(And part of her always hoped, when she said it, that someone would know the name. Someone would know her as she was, and perhaps take her back there. This hope faded over time, but she kept introducing herself that way. It was something she had, and she would hold onto it with both hands fisted tight.)

(Her name was a gift she gave to herself. One of the only ones she ever got to keep.)

Tatooine was dry and unkind, but Shmi grew up clever. She also grew up beautiful, but often wished she hadn’t. There are things which beautiful creatures need to endure, which they might have escaped were they not. 

Once, after something she would have rather not endured, she was lying on her side and floating somewhere above her body. And she heard the Force, suddenly, louder than she heard it in years. Since she was a child. 

“You are going to have a baby,” the Universe said to her. 

To Shmi’s eternal shame, her first instinct was to cry. And so she did, curled up with her arms drawn tight to her, she cried long and she cried hard because she was hurt and she deserved to.

But the Universe held onto her and filled her with warmth and said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, we love you, he will love you too. He will be the child of no Man. The child of me and every other. He will do Great Things.”

For a time, this only made Shmi cry harder, because she knew what happened to the mothers of boys who did great things. And she was supposed to be a princess. Priestess. Queen. Skywalker.

Now, she would be Mother. 

But after she cried, she sat up, and wiped off her face, and took a deep breath. For  _ Mother _ could also be  _ Strength _ .  _ Mother _ could mean  _ Universe _ the way  _ Force _ meant  _ Universe _ .  _ Mother _ could mean  _ Protector _ and  _ Guardian _ and she if she was cast to be  _ Mother, _ she would be the best  _ Mother _ she could be. 

And so Shmi Skywalker carried her son to term. And she screamed her way through the birth. She held him and named him “Anakin.” She named him “Anakin Skywalker,” and she told him that every day. 

She gave him the only gift the Universe ever gave her, save her son. The only thing she still had of the life that was supposed to be hers. The life she should have been able to give her son, and could not. 

He sang in the Force and he sang with the rightness of his name. Skywalker was not a slave name, and her son would not be a slave forever. He would carry the name of the rulers of her people, her probably-dead people, the people who had almost certainly forgotten about her. 

But it was something. It was their own. It was proof that Shmi Skywalker came from somewhere far away from the dunes of Tatooine. 

The Force-Which-Binds was stronger in her son that it was in her. She could feel that. And so she whispered what few pieces of her education that she remembers into his hair before he goes to sleep. 

“Your mind is a dancer,” she would say, “your mind is a bird. Some people would tell you to protect it by building walls, building cages, but that is not how you protect birds That is how you trap them. You must move, always, in your mind. You must be so fast and so slippery and unknowable that, when they try to close your hands around you, you slide through like river water. Like grains of rice.”

“Like sand?” asked her son, who had only even known sand. 

“Yes,” said Shmi, through her tight throat. “Like sand. But imagine yourself in the sky, always, Ani. Viewing the world from there. Sky-walker.”

Which was why the once-princess was called that, during the old once-upon-a-time. Because she would have perspective. She would have the ability to see all as if from above. She would lead them because she could see things they couldn’t.

This was a lesson Shmi did not finish learning how to do, but it was also one she never forgot. And perspective is a useful thing for a slave to have, too. 

She told her son, sometimes, haltingly, of the place where she came from. Tall trees and dramatic hills. Grass that grew blue. A warm people who would be hers to lead, one day.

Anakin grew up with those stories, and the Mind Bird Lesson, and the stories of Tatooine desert flowers. Stories about freedom, told in code. 

Shmi imagined seeing the world from above, and lived. Soon, nearly a decade has passed. More than two since she was dragged away from her home.

Here is where another story starts. Once upon a time, there was a little slave boy and his mother. The little boy was destined for great things. One day, a wise and foolish knight came into town, and could sense that the boy was destined to change the galaxy. So he spirited him away to become a knight like himself, and made several other bad choices which sets up a lot of pain for everyone involved. 

But also, this one: once upon a time, there was a woman who was not a princess and not a priestess and not a queen. There was a woman who was a mother and a slave. She watched the former part walk away from her, and leave her the latter as all she had left. And she couldn’t even be sad about it, because it meant that her child was free. 

( _"Will I ever see you again?"_

_"What does your heart tell you?"_

And Shmi nearly wept, at what she was saying and what her son answers.)

She looked around her empty space and asked the Force, “What do I do now?”

And the answer to that, of course, was  _ live _ . And Shmi, like her people taught her, like her name reminded her, saw things from above. She saw the whole picture. 

So, in this living, there was a freedom trail and secret meetings, hiding in plain sight and hiding more literally. There was setting up transport and back-room surgeries and, maybe, setting up the precedent for a granddaughter who would be called “Hutt-Slayer.” And years passed, and Shmi was not free, but she was good. She did good. And that good mattered.

And then a man who was not very bright but was kind enough asked her if she’d want to leave and be free and live on a farm, and she said yes, and she married him, because she wasn’t a queen or a princess or a priestess and a slave woman took happiness where she could find it. And she’d lost all hope, at some point, that she’d ever make it home. She was pretty sure it wouldn’t be home anymore, anyway. 

And if we want to end this story happily, or something close to happily, we end it here. And they lived happily together in their golden years, the end. 

But you know that isn’t true. This is a story that’s already happened, long ago and far away. You know how this ends. 

Once upon a time, a woman who was not a queen, and not a princess, and not a priestess, died in the desert in her son’s arms, after being hurt one last time, just so the world could remind her it could hurt her. She got to tell her son she loved him, because she did. And then she died. 

And the Universe opened up to her, and she saw All. 

And she hurt more. 

_ ‘This is what does it, _ ’ she realized.  _ ‘This is what tips the scale. My son is going to destroy the universe. My son is going to use this moment to let him destroy the universe. Was this what I was here for? To bring him into this world and then be the thing that lets him destroy it? Is this what  _ Mother  _ is?’  _

In the strange, cosmic void, Shmi hurt for her son and she hurt for the galaxy and then, for once, for once in her entire life, she let herself be selfish. She let herself hurt for herself. She let herself ache for a little girl who was stolen and beaten and sold and never went home again, and the fact that little girl ended like this. 

_ ‘Will anyone even remember me?' _ she asked the Universe, too exhausted to even be angry.  _ ‘Will they remember me as more than the mother of a little boy who turned into a monster? More than the death which drove him over the edge? Will they remember how I got here, what I should have been, will they remember that I was supposed to be more than this? Will they remember all of the good I did and all of the people I helped and— did any of that good even matter? Will they remember me for myself? All I have ever wanted is to exist and live as myself.’ _

_ ‘They will remember your name. You saved that name and you held it and you gave it to your son, and it will travel the stars. Heroes will bear that name. _ Skywalker  _ will live on in infamy.’ _

_ ‘But,’ _ said the princess, and the priestess, and the queen, and the slave woman. 

_ ‘But,’_ says Shmi Skywalker, _‘will they remember it was mine?’_

  
_ ‘No,’ _ says the Universe.  _ ‘No, they won’t.’ _

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! and thank you for reading <3


End file.
